Work in the Dakota Group 1 1 



sutler's store, I heard him remark, after he had 

 filled himself well with whisky, " All the property on 

 the Smoky Hill is mine. I want it, and then I want 

 hair." 



He got both the following year. 



In July, 1867, owing to the fear of an Indian 

 outrage, General A. J. Smith gave us at the ranch a 

 guard of ten colored soldiers under a colored ser- 

 geant, and all the settlers gathered in the stockade, 

 a structure about twenty feet long and fourteen 

 wide, built by setting a row of cottonwood logs in 

 a trench and roofing them over with split logs, 

 brush, and earth. During the height of the excite- 

 ment, the women and children slept on one side of 

 the building in a long bed on the floor, and the men 

 on the other side. 



The night of the third of July was so sultry that 

 I concluded to sleep outside on a hay-covered shed. 

 At the first streak of dawn I was awakened by the 

 report of a Winchester, and, springing up, heard the 

 sergeant call to his men, who were scattered in rifle 

 pits around the building, to fall in line. 



As soon as he had them lined up, he ordered them 

 to fire across the river in the direction of some cot- 

 tonwoods, to which a band of Indians had retreated. 

 The whites came forward with guns in their 

 hands and offered to join in the fight, but the ser- 

 geant commanded : " Let the citizens keep in the 



